Archive for November, 2005
Here’s an innovative VoIP product:
Priced at $299, the NB9W MyNetGateway is an integrated broadband access device that incorporates an ADSL2+ modem/router, Wireless Access Point/Bridge and VoIP Gateway delivering in one package what initially required four separate devices.
"The MyNetGateway is the perfect unit for users who want to remove the annoyance associated with having multiple communication, networking and Internet devices in the one workstation," said David Stewart, Managing Director, NetComm. "The integrated features of the NB9W allow users to combine the technologies into one simple, stylish box, making it ideal for residential and business users alike."
The NB9W is the first product in NetComm’s new PerformaPlus series of high-end Internet hardware units.
"The PerformaPlus series is designed to deliver robust performance to handle multiple processor-intensive Internet applications simultaneously – including VoIP, Video on Demand, High Definition Multimedia Streaming, Web serving/hosting and On-line gaming," said Stewart. "We’ve developed it for demanding home or small business users that don’t compromise on quality or performance when selecting broadband or computer hardware."
City Halls in Massachusetts switched to VoIP:
The town of Milton has switched to Internet-based phone technology in Town Hall, joining Hingham as one of the first municipalities in the region to make the leap to a system on the cutting edge of communication technology.
The move was designed to eventually save money, but it also solves a more immediate problem: it had become increasingly difficult to find people who could repair what had become an archaic phone system, said town officials.
Milton Town Administrator David A. Colton said he expected savings of about $300 or $400 a month. The system cost about $40,000 to install.
”We had to get a new phone system because the old system was defunct," said Colton. ”It was old and archaic. . . . It was very expensive to call a service guy."
There is an added benefit for residents: The new system allows for quick changes so a town can, for example, set up a flu hot line ”in 20 minutes," said Steve Becker, Hingham’s manager of information services. It couldn’t be done before.
The system is called VoIP, or ”voice over Internet protocol." It uses the same underlying technology as the Internet.
With VoIP, the person making the call does not notice anything different. He or she gets the same dial tone and the phone generally looks the same, explained Michael E. Roberts, chairman of Milton’s Technology Committee, which helped the town make the switch. But underneath the surface, the technology is very different from old phone lines. The caller’s words are digitized and disassembled into packets of information that are sent whizzing across the Internet. At the other end, the packets are reassembled into speech.
Consumers and companies like it because it’s cheaper. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, a business analysis company, says by next year two-thirds of the world’s 2,000 largest companies will be using VoIP. And IDC Corp., a Framingham-based research company, has projected that its use in the United States will grow from 3 million people this year to 27 million in 2009.
And Vancouver, BC may do the same:
The City of Vancouver is considering switching to Voice over Internet Protocol, a state-of-the-art telephone system promising improved customer service, cost savings and internal operational efficiencies.
The city has 6,000 phones using equipment anywhere from eight to 20 years old, and in some cases facing end of manufacturer support.
Staff are recommending the city pay Planetworks Consulting Corp. about $60,000, plus taxes to help the city develop a corporate telephony strategy.
Becker, in the first story above, makes a good point about the flexibility of VoIP. If an emergency comes up, VoIP will allow them to react immediately, 24/7. With a traditional phone line, who knows how long you’d have to wait to get your telco to respond.
The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) of the Philippines has issued new rules restricting VoIP services.
Under the recently issued regulations, VoIP calls must be routed through fixed-line carriers. It is illegal for calls to be routed solely and directly via foreign IP addresses.
Furthermore, the NTC regulations prohibit foreign-owned companies from offering VoIP services in the Philippines. Only companies which are at least 60% owned by Filipino citizens will be allowed to offer VoIP.
The regulations appear to have been put in place for protectionist reasons, though, no doubt, they’ll force Filipinos to continue paying high prices for long distance telephone service.
More in the China VoIP blocking saga.
Two weeks ago, US IP technology firm Verso announced that it had sold a trial version of its VoIP blocking software to a "tier one" telecommunications firm in China. Verso touted its NetSpective® M-Class product as being a great way for Internet service providers to limit their customers ability to use the full range of Internet services.
Skype CEO Niklas Zennstrom responded to Verso’s announcement by calling it a PR stunt in an interview with the Financial Times, claiming that he had no knowledge of VoIP being blocked in China through the use of Verso’s IP filtering product.
Enraged, Verso CEO Monty Bannerman shot back saying that Verso is indeed working with a Chinese telecom:
“Verso does have an executed trial agreement with a tier one carrier in China; however, at the request of the customer, we will maintain their anonymity until the trial is completed. We will not jeopardize an important business relationship to respond to baseless comments,” said Monty Bannerman, CEO, Verso Technologies. “Verso has been doing business in China for more than 10 years and we understand the market and its regulatory environment. In addition, it has been widely reported that Skype technology is illegal in China,” added Bannerman.
Verso’s press release continued to tout the benefits of IP service blocking, such as decreased vulnerability to viruses and lower bandwidth usage by customers. It’s clear that traditional telecommunications firms would prefer that customers not switch to cheaper VoIP services, and that Internet service providers would prefer that their customers use less bandwidth. It’s also clear that these benefits are in diametric opposition to the interests of customers who want access to VoIP.
Sadly, in a country where telecom is heavily regulated, as it is in China, IP service disablers like Verso probably stand to make a good deal of money – at the expense of the public.
The FCC launched a new Web site today on E911 issues for consumers, industry personnel and state and local government officials with information about the FCC’s E911 regulations for VoIP service providers. The site is run jointly with the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.
FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin said, “Anyone who dials 911 has a reasonable expectation that he or she will be connected to an emergency operator; this expectation exists whether that person is dialing 911 from a traditional wireline phone, a wireless phone, or a VoIP phone. This new Web site will provide an easy way for consumers, industry and other government agencies to get the most current information on this important issue.”
The E911 issue has been very contentious recently, but this issue has been in the works for at least a year now, so it’s disappointing that the FCC and industry are dragging their feet on it.
The new site is www.voip911.gov
Monday, November 14th, 2005 | Posted in VoIP News | 1 Comment »
One of the most productive governmental regulations of telephony requires phone companies to let you keep your number when you switch carriers.
As more people switch their primary home phone over to VoIP, there’s been a corresponding increase in the number of reports of number transfers (called "ports") that have gone wrong. People have been without phone service for weeks or even months when their phone number enters a black hole of sorts: incoming calls go nowhere.
The porting process gets started when you fill out an authorization form and send it in with a copy of your phone bill to the new carrier. Your new phone company will forward the request along to your old phone company. In theory, you should then get about a week’s notice that the number is being "ported" over to the new carrier, and that should be just about the end of it. Your new carrier and its landline partner will work with your old carrier and its landline partner to work out the details of the transfer behind the scene.
But, for a small number of people, one of those four groups drops the ball. Perhaps the authorization request letter is lost, or there’s a technical problem in the computers and the ported number doesn’t get picked up by your new carrier.
Then it’s a game of "Whodunnit?" to determine where the problem is and how to get it resolved. Here’s a classic story of a small business that couldn’t receive incoming phone calls on the telephone number it had listed on over 300 Web pages for nearly two months:
http://www.netadventures.biz/vonageproblem.htm
This shouldn’t be a reason for you to shy away from porting your telephone number if you want to switch providers. But you’re better off preparing in advance. Make sure you have another way to make and receive calls until the new service is up and running in case anything goes wrong. And give your friends, family or important customers your e-mail address or alternate telephone number to be on the safe side.
Monday, November 14th, 2005 | Posted in VoIP News | 1 Comment »
We posted a story earlier about Microsoft’s acquisition of Media-Streams.com in order to get its VoIP technology. Here’s a screenshot of what Microsoft Live Messenger will look like:
It integrates instant messaging, VoIP, Google Maps-style maps and an address book. Pretty cool.
When can I get all of this on a cell phone PDA?
A study by European business communications firm Viatel of European IT directors found that nearly half of them believe that VoIP (Voice over IP) is "inherently insecure" – with 56% of those who work in the financial services industry saying the same.
Viruses and denial of service attacks were seen as the biggest threats. This seems to indicate that IT directors are more concerned about having their networks shut down than losing sensitive data to snooping or hacking.
"There has been a lot of discussion recently about the VoIP security. Yet, in reality, when you cut through all the hype, securing voice traffic really isn’t any different from securing data traffic – it’s all about ensuring your IP network is secure," said Roberto Bonanzinga, senior vice president of business development and marketing for Viatel.
"However, there are some key security measures that companies should follow to put their minds at rest, such as encrypting voice traffic, running it over a VPN, making sure firewalls are properly configured and choosing a provider where you don’t have to completely overhaul your firewall configuration," he said.
Separately, Broadband Business Forecast claims to have uncovered the "first major VoIP hacking scheme":
According to Zipper, hackers have figured out a way to manipulate the IP stream in order to steal long-distance service. Many in the communications industry are keeping things quiet while they assess the full extent of the potential damage, but sources admit this security breach “could expose a lot of companies to a great deal of fraud.”
Telephony hacking isn’t new, with fraud perpetrated on an entire phone system. Today, says Zipper, with VoIP, a hacker only needs access to the corporate network. What enables the hack isn’t VoIP per se; it’s the fact that VoIP is simply another IP stream on the network.
“I’ve been watching VoIP security issues carefully for months now, and I knew it was just a matter of time until one of the significant players found something amiss to tell me about,” Zipper says. “So, in the end, it was just a matter of basic real journalism – asking the right people the right questions.”
Prior to publication, Zipper spoke with softswitch developers, backbone carriers, competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs), network security experts, billing companies and others. He learned (but did not divulge in print) how hackers were breaking into enterprise VoIP networks. Shawn Lewis, CTO and systems expert at VoIP Inc., admits hackers have found a way to manipulate cost codes billing companies have used to track phone calls. Essentially, these hackers “zero out” the code so that the billing system believes a call was incomplete and, thus, should not be charged to the caller or the caller’s company.
Representatives of several phone billing service houses who declined to be quoted by name told Zipper they never receive call details for supposedly incomplete calls because such billing houses charge by the processed call, even if it’s a call billed at zero. “Literally, the zeroed calls are stripped out of the data stream before the billing data is sent – and the information relegated to an electronic cutting-room floor,” Zipper says.
As part of the ongoing saga of the fight over FCC VoIP wiretap regulations, this story is about the FBI’s use of "national security letters" to gain access to the private information and electronic communications of Americans without judicial review – or any oversight, really:
It does point up how dangerous this can be," said Hagel, who appeared with Biden on ABC’s "This Week."
Under the Patriot Act, the FBI issues more than 30,000 national security letters allowing the investigations each year, a hundred-fold increase over historic norms, The Washington Post reported Sunday, quoting unnamed government sources.
The security letters, which were first used in the 1970s, allow access to people’s phone and e-mail records, as well as financial data and the Internet sites they surf. The 2001 Patriot Act removed the requirement that the records sought be those of someone under suspicion.
As a result, FBI agents can review the digital records of a citizen as long as the bureau can certify that the person’s records are "relevant" to a terrorist investigation.
Calling the recent growth in the number of letters a "stunner," Biden said, "Thirty thousand seems like an awful, awful stretch to me."
Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said Sunday that he could not immediately confirm or dispute the 30,000 figure, but he said the power to use the security letters was justified.
"The
Department of Justice inspector general in August 2005 found no civil rights violations with respect to the Patriot Act," he said.
Issued by the FBI without review by a judge, the letters are used to obtain electronic records from "electronic communications service providers." Such providers include Internet service companies but also universities, public interest organizations and almost all libraries, because most provide access to the Internet.
Last September in an ACLU lawsuit, a federal judge in New York struck down this provision as unconstitutional on grounds that it restrains free speech and bars or deters judicial challenges to government searches.
That ruling has been suspended pending an appeal to the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In a hearing last week the court suggested it might require the government to permit libraries, major corporations and other groups to challenge FBI demands for records.
The Patriot Act provision involving national security letters was enacted permanently in 2001, so it was not part of Congress’ debate last summer over extending some Patriot Act provisions.
NetZero Voice: NetZero launches NetZero Voice
, it’s new Voice over IP offering. There are five levels of service ranging from a free peer-to-peer plan to unlimited calling in the US and Canada for $14.95. A three month free long distance introductory offer is being extended to new subscribers, as well.
"We believe consumers should not have to have broadband Internet access in order to enjoy the price savings and feature content of Internet phone calling," said Mark R. Goldston, chairman, CEO and president of United Online. "With plan prices ranging from free to $14.95, NetZero Voice lets dial-up or broadband Internet users make Internet phone calls for less than they would pay for traditional phone service or for many other VoIP service plans. The full-featured NetZero Voice does not require an adaptor, a router or any other high tech hardware and there are no start-up fees. All you do is download and install the free software in a matter of minutes, plug in a microphone and speakers or a headset and start making Internet phone calls."
